Wreck-it Ralph

Rate PG

Catholic-ometer: 2 of 5

Enjoyability: 2.5 of 5

Wreck-it Ralph was a film that dared to dream big.  The premise, according to all the commercials, was about video game characters coming to life when the arcade closes and meeting with one another in their off hours.  In the midst of all this, a video game bad guy named Ralph decides that he's sick of being a villain and wants to become a hero and earn a medal, but where would a big, tough, giant of a man with enormous hands be able to earn a medal?

Showcasing Ralph's quest, and the many encounters with characters from -real- video games, the ads for the film promised the story of a strong, powerful protagonist who faces insurmountable odds and achieves his goal of truly getting the recognition that he deserves.  There were also some brief clips of some little, candy brat doing a stupid and un-funny routine where she insults him for no reason, but at worst, we thought, she'll be like Timon and Puumba; a latecomer who's annoying at times, but doesn't disrupt the movie.

Big mistake.

As I saw it, there were four big factors in this movie; four things that it seemed to be trying to accomplish.

1. Ralph's impressiveness as a main character.

2. The fun of the journey and the search for the reward.

3. The reforming of Ralph into a hero, and the handling of heroism in general in the movie; its moral center.

4. The presence and relevance of the other video game characters from other video games.

I'm going to be judging the film on its handling of each of these areas, since, when you get down to it, these are the areas in which the movie had a chance to really shine.

1. There's no doubt that Ralph had a lot of potential as a hero, and it's been a while since we've seen a hero of his type.  He's 9 feet tall, weighs over 600 lbs, and his fists are larger than his head.  Not only that, but given the length of his arms, this is clearly the sort of bruiser who you don't want to tangle with in a straight-up fight.  Ralph has the potential to be a terrifying enemy, or an incredible hero; a man's man, who gets the job done, and almost threatens to bring the notion back into the public eye, that men can be heroes too.

The only question is; how much of this potential was used?  Sadly, the answer is "hardly any."

Ralph does get to use his great strength, speed and smashing powers on a semi-regular basis, but as for coming across as a bruiser, or a manly guy, who one might actually want to be like, there's almost none of that here.

Ralph is played up, from the very start, as a comedy fall guy.  In his early attempts to acquire a medal, he blunders around, panics, trips, falls, gets yelled at, sets off traps and activates dozens of deadly enemy bug-eggs.  Still, these things can happen, even to a very impressive hero.

Unfortunately, Ralph's personality is done little better.  He's portrayed largely as an unthreatening, sitcom oaf, who has his desires and all that, but never needs to be taken too seriously, and sure enough, the other characters don't take him seriously at all.  He complains about not getting cake, whines when he's stopped by the embodiment of a surge protector, and generally acts sad and mopey over his lot in life, and even when he decides to take action, it's done in more of a "ah-ha!  I have a plan!" way, rather than demonstrating real, strong determination to change his life.

However, perhaps the worst thing about Ralph's presentation as the main character is that he's really -not- the main character.  That honor is reserved for Vanilly... Vanelly...  Sarah Silverman, who plays a bratty little girl from a candyland-inspired slot car racing game called "Sugar Rush," (which, like "Fix-it Felix Jr," Ralph's game, is not a real game at all.)  About a third of the way into the movie, Ralph finds himself in Sugar Rush, and then that's pretty much it.  The part of the movie that you wanted to see, about Ralph struggling to attain his goal and being a cool main character is pretty much over.

The Sarah Silverman character steals Ralph's medal and runs off, trouncing and outdoing him in climbing, running and pretty much everything else with embarrassing ease.  Try to imagine your favorite baseball player getting up to bat, and being just -utterly humiliated- by a five-year-old girl with a squeaky voice, who thinks she's funny, and isn't.  As spacious as Ralph's faults may be, he's still supposed to be the main character, and we don't want to see this done to him.

However, you'd better get used to it.  Sarah Silverman continues humiliating Ralph.  She's annoying and bratty, never learns a single lesson of any value, and yet, the director wants us to believe she's always right.  Sarah Silverman is annoying, even when she's -not- saddled with this kind of role.  Frankly, the whole thing from this point on made me wince, particularly since we're apparently supposed to start caring about her, and want her to succeed, even though she's already proven that she's a liar and a thief, and doesn't care about Ralph -at all.-  No.  Just no.  This movie fails to make Ralph an impressive, manly main character, because he's not nearly as impressive as he should be, comes off as more oafish than manly, and isn't even the main character.

2. Is the journey any fun?  Are we excited to see whether or not Ralph will get his reward?  Well, no.  Not really.  Even at the start, Ralph's motives for wanting the medal are a little materialistic and unsatisfying.  He seems less concerned with being appreciated than with medals, and cakes and penthouses; things that you can touch.  His reasons for going on the quest just felt too physical to me.  It's not like Aladdin, who wants to be treated as more than just street scum, or Belle, who wants some excitement and something transcendent;  beyond her normal life.  These are purely material desires, and frankly, I can't sympathize.

As I said, Ralph tends to panic and flee when he's confronted with difficult and dangerous circumstances, which puts a massive damper on the excitement and fun of the quest.  You might as well just admit that Ralph; whatever his potential, isn't much of a hero at this point, and of course, a fun quest that does not make.

If it's not fun at -that- stage, it's certainly a great deal -less- fun when Sarah Silverman is introduced, and the movie takes a hard left turn away from the quest that it was supposed to be about.  Eventually, it's completely forgotten.

Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing.  In many movies, the initial motivation is for riches, or power, or recognition, and the character ultimately learns that these are not as important as family and happiness, and doing the right thing.  All well and good.

The problem is that in -this- movie, what replaces the medal is -not- good, wholesome values, but just Ralph's desire to be "liked" by Sarah Silverman, and doing things that will make her feel better.  This is a problem for two reasons.  1. Being liked is not a virtue.  2. Doing things that make people feel better is not a virtue.  This movie replaces shallow materialism with the slightly-less-shallow motive of wanting to be liked by at least one person.  A fun quest that does not make.

3. What is the moral center of the movie?  Is Ralph a hero?  Is he made into a hero, and does he reform?  Is this a story of a person reforming from their evil ways?

Well, no.  It's not.  The premise of the film is that all characters in video games are essentially actors playing roles.  Therefore, the heroes are often not terribly heroic, and the villains not terribly villainous, once you catch them off-duty.  Therefore, no real reforming needs to be done.  Ralph isn't a -real- villain.  He just plays one on TV.

Of course, this raises several questions.  Why do the hero and the NPCs treat Ralph like an outcast outside of work hours?  Isn't that -actually- evil?  I mean, he didn't do anything wrong.  He just did what he was supposed to do; wreck the building, so Felix could fix it.  Ralph was just doing what he was hired (essentially) to do.  The reaction of the NPCs is essentially elitism on the basis of the pre-determined caste system that was programmed into them, and ultimately, that makes them the real bad guys for most of the movie.

Strangely, many of the other video game villains seem similar to Ralph in that sense; not horrible people; just actors doing their jobs.

Here's the problem.  Throughout the entire movie, they continue using the word "bad" to mean "the role of villain in a game," and "good" to mean "the role of hero in a game," and that is -not- what those words mean.  I almost got the impression that the movie was trying to imply that -real- good and evil were as insubstantial as the roles that one plays in the acting profession, which is just a total rejection of the most basic foundations of all true knowledge.  It's a false as false can be.

This aspect of the film really comes to a head when Ralph performs a truly heroic act near the movie's end, while reciting the "bad guy affirmation," about how he'll never be "good," and the only thing he wants to be is himself.  If there is one line that can utterly kill the substance of an act of heroic self-sacrifice on the part of a main character, this is it.

In the end, of course, people start to appreciate Ralph a little more, and treat him a little better, but through it all, the substance of -real- good and evil is lost in the dust.  Heroism is demonstrated, but not addressed, and the movie's moral core seems to aim, rather, at a sort of Hollywood, rich-people, anti-moralism than any sort of actual moral message that a kid could understand or benefit from.

4. That brings us to the final area on which this movie should be judged; the video game characters who make appearances.  I got the impression that this movie wanted to emulate "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," which had a lot of guest-appearances by other characters from other cartoons, from Bugs Bunny to Mickey Mouse.  This is, in fact, the aspect of the film that's showcased most in the trailers; the video game guest stars, but I hope you enjoyed those trailers, because they covered -nearly all- of the guest appearances by real game characters in this movie.

The bad guy meeting has a bunch of guest characters, then there are the brief scenes in game central station, and a scene in the Tapper video game.  Q-bert and his pals show up in a few more scenes, but aside from those, that's pretty much all the guest appearances you'll see, most of which, as I said, are in the film's first third, before the Sugar Rush debacle.

Yes, it's charming to see these characters rendered in 3D.  Yes, it's fun to see them in a high-profile movie.  However, they don't act like the characters in the games, because they're not.  They're just actors playing roles.  As for the rest, it's a minor thrill with little or no substance behind it.  I got that thrill from the trailers, but the film had little to offer after that in this area.

The other aspect that I thought would be a mainstay of the plot was traversing one video game world after another in Ralph's quest.  Guess how many he travels to.  Go ahead.  Guess.

Two.

Ralph goes to the bad guy meeting in the Pac-Man game, though it just looks like a blank room during the scene itself.  He then spends two scenes in the video game "Tapper," where he drinks and talks to Tapper about his problems.  Apart from this, none of the worlds that Ralph visits are based off real video games, except for Fix-it Felix Jr itself, which I'm not going to count, because it's just an online game that was made to promote the film.  I'm not counting that.

The only other worlds that Ralph visits are Hero's Duty and Sugar Rush, and there are no games for those.  You will never play Hero's Duty.  You will never play Sugar Rush.  They don't exist, and they never will.

Roger Rabbit was a multi, mega cartoon crossover masterpiece, and a darn good story in its own right, and that's what Wreck-it Ralph could have been.  A multi, mega, video game crossover masterpiece, and a darn good story in its own right.  However, it sank its own story when it decided to be about Sarah Silverman, rather than an awesome, heroic title character, and it's certainly not the massive video game crossover that the ads suggest.

Conclusion

In the final analysis, this movie fails or does poorly on nearly every level.  It's not -that bad- compared to some recent animated films, allegedly for kids, but this says more about the state of modern children's entertainment than it does about Wreck-it Ralph.  I give it a nearly halfway grade for this reason, but I have to be honest here; I consider this film to be a major disappointment.  It seemed to have great promise, and whatever else you can say about it, you can't say it made good on that promise.

Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Rated G

Catholic-ometer: 3.5 of 5

Enjoyability: 5 of 5

This is the Disney version of the movie I'm reviewing; the one with Katherine Beaumont playing the voice of the curious, energetic, dinner-bell-shaped, delightfully-pedantic character of Alice.  I'm just going to say this up front; it has little to teach anyone morally or religiously, but in spite of this, I think this is one of the most fun movies I've ever watched.

In retrospect, in fact, there are a couple of really good ways to watch this film; both of which are very enjoyable.

Way number one is to look for the symbolism in the story, and believe me when I say that it is there.  The original Alice in Wonderland books were brilliantly-disguised pieces of social and political sattire, with the behaviors of the various characters poking fun at a number of trends which existed at the time, and much the same thing can be found here.

You can easily see corrupt, greedy elitists in the Walrus, hardworking, but still rather selfish ordinary people in the Carpenter, Dodo could be a parody of every foolish figure in public office who tries to solve problems by making them worse, and seems utterly oblivious to the cares of those he's hurting, etc...  Then, of course, the symbolism found in characters like the stuck-up, in-crowdy flower patch, the beatnik caterpillar and the Queen of Hearts are so easy to decypher as to be laughable.

On the other hand, you could just watch it the way that I nearly always watch it; laugh in delight as Alice uses her apparently-magic skirt to parachute down into Wonderland, grows and shrinks incessantly, and meets all manner of ridiculous things and people in the process.  In short, you could watch the movie just for fun; as a welcome escape from the world of men.

My favorite animated Disney movies of all time are Fantasia, Beauty and the Beast, and this movie.  Each plays a special role and each does something different.  Fantasia tells no single, concrete story.  Beauty and the Beast tells a very definite story.  Alice in Wonderland is middle-of-the-roadish, in that it tells a series of mini-stories which last only a short time, and are rather disconnected from one another.  Weird things happen, the main character moves on, and more weird things happen.  This is the element of the movie that every child loves.

However, as an adult, I find something more in Alice than I do in Wonderland.  To be perfectly honest, I think the personality of Alice is as much of a draw for me as the land she explores.  Alice is very curious and brave; daring and bold, but not obnoxious.  Perhaps most distinctively, Alice distinguishes herself from other cartoon heroines in that she seems to have a raging obsession with formality, dignity and politeness, which I still find one of the most charming traits any protagonist could possibly have.

Speaking personally, I never saw Alice as an everyman type, or an avatar for the viewer.  Of all the amazing things in Wonderland, she, a child who's truly concerned with being polite, may be one of the most amazing.  Children may relate to her confusion at seeing so many strange things in the world, and her sense of wonder when she encounters them, but I think it would be too much to suggest that there is any child quite like her.

Any problems that I might have with this film stem entirely from its lack of any clear message or moral, and that's merely a personal bias of mine.  I also would have liked it to be longer, but I think that about most of the movies I really enjoy.  If you like odd characters, strange behaviors, weird situations, bizarre creatures, and just plain unusualness all around, seen with the eyes of a protagonist who's as dignified and polite as the world is strange, then what you're looking for can probably be found in Wonderland.

In fact, in a way, all of this is reminiscent of our own desired destiny; a journey onwards into a world of great wonders and fewer limits in terms of what is and isn't possible.

Tangled

Rated PG

Catholic-ometer: 4 of 5

Enjoyability: 4.5 of 5

Looking back on my review of the Princess and the Frog, I feel I may have dropped the ball (no joke intended) in one respect.  I didn't give it sufficient credit for the fact that both main characters cared enough about each other to sacrifice themselves; in other words, true love.  I apologize for overlooking this.

I only mention this because the very same thing is present to an even greater degree in Tangled; probably one of the better animated Disney movies I've ever seen in my life.  Not top three, certainly, but top ten at least.

It's a story about Rapunzel and how she escapes from her tower to find out the secret of the lanterns that rise into the sky each year on her birthday.  In escaping, she enlists the assistance of a thieving, manipulative, philandering bandit named Flynn Ryder (he gets better,) and has to struggle to keep from being dragged back to the tower by the hag Gothel, who's been using her magic hair to stay young.

Tangled has everything.  There are scenes with fun, fast-paced action and adventure, scenes with pure comedy, heartwarming scenes, goofy scenes, romantic scenes, tragic scenes, etc, and sometimes, a little overlap.  There are running gags that travel through the whole movie, characters who always bring a little levity to the scenes they're in, and Rapunzel's mile-long hair is easily as eye-catching and fun to watch in action as the balloon house from "Up."

The horse Maximus is one of the coolest and funniest characters I've ever seen.  Utterly wordless, unquestionably upright and unshakably determined to see justice done, and yet, he pulls it off with a sort of goofy seriousness rivaling the vorpal bunny from Monty Python.  No matter what scenes Maximus is in, it always benefits from having him in it.  In fact, I'd say he's probably the best enforcer that the royal guards have at their disposal.

Gothel is a surprisingly well-done villain.  She might be a witch, but there's no indication of it.  She never uses any magic.  She's just crafty and manipulative, and really, when you think about it, that's all that most real villains are too.  On top of that, having very little power makes it much more of a challenge to write for a villain, and yet, in a sense, much more rewarding.  Coming up with schemes for an intelligent villain requires intelligent writers, and I absolutely appreciate the effort that was put into this.

Rapunzel's real parents never say a word, and neither does her best friend; the chameleon Pascal, but in a way, the fact that they can be so expressive and convey such a breadth and depth of emotions regardless, is itself quite an accomplishment.  I was amazed by just how much was accomplished with these characters, without ever saying a word.

Flynn and Rapunzel both have basically the same problem, as characters, unfortunately, and that is that while their relationship is utterly serious in later scenes, they both start out more or less goofy and hyper.  Rapunzel uses a lot of modern, casual, teenagery terminology, and Flynn is even worse in this respect, since he starts out with so many character flaws.  Still, as I said, all of this gets better later on, so it's very well-done.  Flynn is played a little like Bill Murray's character from Groundhog Day.  You don't really like him at first, but as time goes on, he becomes a better person.

Rapunzel is a little different in that respect.  She's likable from the very start; quirky and weird in a happy sense.  Energetic, intelligent and imaginative.  However, even she starts out the movie with nothing to really sacrifice, and no one to sacrifice for, and it really helps as the movie progresses, and this gradually changes, until she and Flynn both become truly heroic characters.

Flynn is clearly shown stealing, betraying, philandering and so forth, so there's obviously a reason for this to be rated PG, but like I said, these aspects of his character don't last.  I was actually amazed by the quality of the music in this movie.  It's truly awesome; even the instrumental tracks.  In fact, it reminded me a lot of Beauty and the Beast; probably because they got the same guy to do it.

The humor in the movie is wacky and weird at times, and very strongly character-driven at other times.  There was no toilet humor, no off-color jokes, etc...  I think that pleased me more than anything.  They had to get away from the Dreamworks/Fox trends of non-funny humor if they wanted to make a real masterpiece, and they did this magnificently.  In fact, I have only two gripes against this film, really.  One small, the other big.

The small one is this; I didn't feel that the narration over the beginning and end of the film was helpful.  It's like the king and queen.  The visuals alone would have told me what I needed to know.  Hearing Flynn talking in modern casual slang over them doesn't improve their ability to tell me the story of what happened.  They could still have had narration, though.  Maybe if it was just a more dignified-sounding kind of narrator, like they got for Beauty and the Beast.

The big gripe is this; something happens to Rapunzel near the end of the film, which drastically alters her appearance, and this truly troubled me.  Granted, this does show Flynn's development as a character more strongly, because it proves his willingness to give his life for her, but I much preferred Rapunzel's quirky looks at the beginning, to her more modern looks at the end.  Still, even this is just a surface-level complaint.  I tend to stop the movie before the ending these days, but if it doesn't bother you as much as it bothered me, have a field day.

To sum it up, Tangled is far superior to the Princess and the Frog, and as I said, one of the better Disney films in general.  Watch it for yourself, and then decide what you like and don't like.  Like I said, a few things bothered me, but I still think it was a great flick, and I hope you'll like it as well.

The Princess and the Frog

Rated G

Catholic-ometer: 2.5 of 5

Enjoyability: 2.5 of 5

Disney movies have a long and well-understood history.  They began with serious, epic stories of fairy tales to enchant young children, degenerated to less-than-epic fare after a while, then came roaring back with awesome animation, mixed up with a little believable character-comedy in the Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast.  After that, the intended secular message of certain films ruined them, and in others, the comedy kind of took center stage, and the quality of Disney films in general declined.  I was more than a bit skeptical of those who said I should give this film a chance, but I wasn't going to reject the possibility of another Disney revival, if they could pull it off.

I've heard people say this film was great, but complicated in its plotline.  I've heard people say it took its characters seriously once again, but had plenty of side-comedy as well.  I've heard people say the only thing they really disliked about it was all the magic thrown around by the bad guy.  Well, I -loved- Sleeping Beauty, and the bad guy in that movie threw a lot of magic around as well, so I was at least interested in what this film had to offer.

Now for the bad news.  For all that this movie sometimes attempts to be yet another masterpiece, and does make an effort to treat the central relationship seriously, it's also very much a product of its times.  By this time, 20th Century Fox and Dreamworks had saturated the movie market with unfunny, immature, toilet-minded films, laughably marketed as "kids movies."  You know the kind of rambling, aimless, hyperactive trash I'm talking about.

The Princess and the Frog had a lot of potential, and much of it was used.  Its main characters are actually interesting and believable people for the most part, and each changes for the better over the course of the film.  It could actually be a charming relationship, if you can ignore the fact that they're both frogs.  In addition, the main villain, while not as physically-threatening as someone like Maleficent, is still a serious and tangible threat to the main characters, and has big plans to do horrible things to them.  He's not a goof; he's a serious, believable villain, and to be honest, of everything in this movie, all the evil voodoo and demons he throws around are probably the things I take the least issue with.  Disney has rarely sugar-coated the reality of evil in their movies, and it's one thing I like most about the majority of their productions.

I also disagree with those who say the plot was too complex.  It did have a lot of weird twists, and you didn't know exactly what the plot was going to be from the start of the film, but that's good.  Kids will benefit if you ask them to think a little bit about what's being fed into their brains, and adults certainly won't be confused by it.  It made perfect sense to me.

However, I do have two problems with it, and they're big ones.  The side-characters, and the treatment of man-woman relations.

First, the second one.  The prince begins his journey as an impenitent philanderer, and never really seriously repents of this later on.  He learns to care about someone, and to work harder, but not to treat women in general with greater respect because they're people too.  That's a moral message that's missing from this movie, and it would really have benefitted from it.

However, I'm more concerned with the "marriage," because last time I checked, blind voodoo ladies weren't priests.  They don't have the authority to wed two people in holy matrimony, and therefore, the ending really is something of a head-scratcher when you think about it.  The treatment of mere human institutions as though they can substitute for legitimate marraige is a pervasive sin in our current society, but endorsing that sin is by no means cool, especially when it's subtle and unobtrusive like this.

With regard to the side-characters, as I said, this film is very much a product of its times, and although many of them get serious moments, for the most part, they exist to be goofy and ridiculous, and to have no real relationships or motives beyond a single desire each, which, this being Disney, they'll need to have granted by the time the film ends.  Louis, Ray, the baiyou hunters, and especially Mama Odie are all goofiness-personified, and this just makes adults feel uncomfortable, because the characters seem to be having a good time, but are impossible to sympathise with.  It doesn't help that some of them (Ray, for example,) get a bit of toilet-humor added to the mix, which no mature adult can appreciate.

Now, when I say "the side-characters," I don't mean -all- the side characters.  Charlotte is goofy too, but she actually demonstrates legitimate love and caring for the main character, and her father isn't the goofiness-engine that some of the others are.  He's a weak human being, but not in an over-the-top way.  In fact, I found him somewhat likable.  I don't remember any of the other characters really standing out in particular.

I guess I could say that what strength the film has comes from its relationship between the two main characters, but actually... there isn't much of anything there.  Oh, don't get me wrong, it's nice to see Disney taking a central relationship seriously again, and they do treat it with all the seriousness it deserves, but I never got the impression that the leads had much of anything in common; not even any real common interests.  They really don't have much reason to even like one another, and the scenes that they have together feel just a little forced as a result.

Lastly, I can't be the only one who felt that the near-complete excision of the human element hurt this film's central relationship a little.  All the really meaningful scenes happen while both are frogs, and really... that's a tough bar to get past.  Likewise, the swamp that most of their development occurs in feels more like a mood-vacuum to stick goofiness into, rather than any actual location with its own flavor or features of consequence.  Then, too, I don't really see why "last two-hundred years New Orleans" was judged to be a better location for this story than medieval Europe, where it traditionally took place.

I was expecting less from this movie, but hoping for more.  It hurt a little in certain points, but there's no real harm done, and despite the complaints that some others have had, I wouldn't worry about the evil magic and demons.  My main concern is with the treatment this film gives to romance, and the overall lack of strong character it contains.  For these reasons and others, I'll probably never bother watching it again.